*   Azure NSG rules are now restricted so that external access is allowed only to the load balancer IP. ([#54177](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54177),[ @itowlson](https://github.com/itowlson))

    * - Update debian-iptables image for CVEs.
    * - Change chain name to IP-MASQ to be compatible with the
    * pre-injected masquerade rules.
* Fix VMWare VM freezing bug by reverting [#51066](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/51066) ([#67825](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67825), [@nikopen](https://github.com/nikopen))

- `Kubelet` no longer creates certain legacy iptables rules by default.
  It is possible that this will cause problems with some third-party components
  that improperly depended on those rules. If this affects you, you can run

- Kube-proxy iptables: new metric sync_proxy_rules_iptables_total that exposes the number of rules programmed per table in each iteration ([#99653](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99653), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Instrumentation and Network]

- The kube-proxy `sync_proxy_rules_iptables_total` metric has now reverted back
  to its pre-1.27 behavior of tracking the total number of iptables rules that
  kube-proxy is responsible for, rather than only counting the number of rules
  that it re-synced on the last sync. The new `sync_proxy_rules_iptables_last`

* Fix issue where masquerade rules are flushed in GCE k8s clusters. ([#56729](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/56729), [@dnardo](https://github.com/dnardo))
* kubelet: Fix bug where `runAsUser: MustRunAsNonRoot` strategy didn't reject a pod with a non-numeric `USER`. ([#56708](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/56708), [@php-coder](https://github.com/php-coder))

      - `scheduler_binding_latency_microseconds` -> `scheduler_binding_duration_seconds`
      - `kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_latency_microseconds` -> `kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds`
      - `apiserver_request_latencies` -> `apiserver_request_duration_seconds`
      - `apiserver_dropped_requests` -> `apiserver_dropped_requests_total`

- `kubeadm reset` now outputs instructions about manual iptables rules cleanup. ([#70874](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/70874), [@rdodev](https://github.com/rdodev))

- In "large" clusters, kube-proxy in iptables mode will now sometimes
  leave unused rules in iptables for a while (up to `--iptables-sync-period`)
  before deleting them. This improves performance by not requiring it to
  check for stale rules on every sync. (In smaller clusters, it will still
  remove unused rules immediately once they are no longer used.)

- In dual-stack clusters, kubelet will now set up both IPv4 and IPv6 iptables rules, which may
  fix some problems, eg with HostPorts. ([#94474](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/94474), [@danwinship](https://github.com/danwinship)) [SIG Network and Node]